Friendships and Peers

Supporting Children’s Friendships

Friendships are such an important part of school-age children’s worlds. There are typical struggles that arise for children around friendships, such as trying to “fit in”, teasing and handling peer pressure. Some children experience greater challenges making and/or maintaining friendships and may feel isolated and lonely. Parents have emotional reactions to their children’s struggles with friendship. This workshop helps parents understand developmentally typical patterns that occur in children’s friendships as well as those which are more difficult. The workshop also provides a framework for when and how parents should become involved with their children’s friendship issues.

Helping Siblings Live Harmoniously

Parents want their children to have wonderful strong bonds and nothing but the warmest feelings for one another; unfortunately, it doesn’t always happen that way. Conflict and competition are often a fact of life with siblings. This workshop helps parents keep sibling rivalry within normal limits and encourage problem solving between siblings whenever possible. Participants will learn about when and when not to become involved in children’s disagreements and learn methods of responding to negative behavior and feelings among siblings.

Helping Children Understand Differences and Resist Prejudice

Children are born free of prejudice, but they notice differences and internalize stereotypic biases at a younger age than most people think. We have all grown up in a society full of biases. We receive subtle and not so subtle messages throughout our lives and have absorbed images and viewpoints of which we are often not even fully aware. This workshop helps parents examine their own points of view, their language, and their behaviors, as part of the effort to help their children resist prejudice. Additionally, the workshop helps parents respond to children’s observations of difference in ways that positively influence their attitudes and avoid stereotyping and prejudice.

Bullies, Targets, and Bystanders

Bullying is a common experience in schools. Parents are frequently concerned that their children will be or are being bullied by other children, or may be bullying others themselves. Certainly all children are witness to some form of bullying during their school years. This two-part series focuses on what parents can do to keep their children from becoming (or help them overcome being) either a bully or a target of bullying. Developing specific social and emotional skills in our children helps them to build and project a strong self-image and avoid getting caught in the cycle of bullying and also helps give them skills to diffuse bullying when they are bystanders.

Session One

A Focus on the Target: Helping the Child Who Is Bullied

This session helps parents identify warning signs that may indicate a child is a target of bullying. The workshop also suggests specific strategies parents can do to help prevent their children from becoming a target or assist their children if they are already targets, including key social and emotional skills to build and practice with their children.

Session Two

Bullies and Bystanders: Preventing and Diffusing Bullying Behavior

This workshop examines the bullying behavior and discusses why children bully and provides specific strategies for parents to employ in preventing and/or treating bullying behavior in their child. In addition, this session identifies developmentally appropriate strategies parents and teachers can teach bystanders to help them diffuse bullying situations.

Toxic Tongues and Cold Shoulders: Unmasking Relational Aggression in Boys and Girls

Relational Aggression is a more subtle and indirect form of bullying, and it is a problem that affects countless children every day. This workshop focuses on what parents can do to keep their children from becoming or overcome being either an aggressor or a target of relational aggression. During the workshop, the warning signs that may point to a child being a target of relational aggression will be examined, along with what parents can do to help their struggling child. Participants will also explore the roles of the relational bully and bystanders and how parents can assist their child to avoid these troubling behaviors through teaching them friendship and empathy skills. Parents will learn how to assess, prevent, intervene, advocate, and problem solve with their child in order to reduce or stop the impact of relational aggression.